Breeding the best occy pet

Colossal Squid

I am interested in trying to breed occy's for pets. The problem of course if finding enough of the same species to get a program going. I think minimum requirements are that the species be large egged, small sized, warm watered, and diurnal.
What do you think would be good species to try to track down?

TONMO Supporter

Looking towards the future, with the economy going into the tank (pardon the pun), I would think the smaller large egged species might be the way to go.

We looked at breeding Digueti for a while, but the cost for startup was just too high. I figured on ten 200 gallon tanks, and the ability to be near the ocean (for the water)...just out of my reach right now.

Certified Ceph Head For Life

Richard,
If the egg count was high (like the briarius) then finding enough would not be a large number (albeit, harder to keep from in-breeding heavily). Is there an Indo species that is not common in the trade yet? Is the Marginatus small egged? It is certainly interesting and not quite nocturnal but not quite diurnal either.

We had a post from someone in Korea not long ago that showed a tank full of octos to be consumed as food yet no one could identify them. Perhaps looking at the food market in the Phillipines or Korea is a way to begin.

Haliphron Atlanticus

Octopus fitchi from Baja might work. I used to collect lots when trying to find stomatpods. It is a big-egged, small ocotpus that seems fairly hardy. The only negative - it bites. No hand feeding with this one.

Certified Ceph Head For Life

L8_2_Rise,
You missed my lament in the journal where I pouted about the small egg issue and is, of course why I did not beg Richard to try them with 1000 votes. I am kind of hoping Thales will raise a few large egged and take the small egg challenge but that may be a pipefish dream.

Haliphron Atlanticus

O. fitchi seems to be crepuscular. They do not come out in the middle of the day, but when I've kept them, they were active early and late in the day. At least they are a big egged species, small and there is a large population in the Gulf of California.

Haliphron Atlanticus

We have had good luck with O. digueti, but with all of these animals, longevity in captivity depends on diet, temperature, and at what size and age they were captured. We just lost our last O. mercatoris that was reared from the egg and that had been in the lab for a full year.

Certified Ceph Head For Life

We have had good luck with O. digueti, but with all of these animals, longevity in captivity depends on diet, temperature, and at what size and age they were captured. We just lost our last O. mercatoris that was reared from the egg and that had been in the lab for a full year.

Oops, I meant to specify the ones that survived from tank hatching and any from tank breeding. The standard line is that they live shorter lives but my thinking (based on only one octo and its children) is that they are caught much older and that a year is about right. My mercs have stayed inside their shells or in the LR until they reach about 5 months (my 6 month old captive bred is just now starting to venture out of her shell and be seen).

If Thales finds an acceptable dwarf, it would be good to know if my thinking has some merit and that they should live about a year (three of my 5 TR lived over a year - two still alive at 13 months - but the female and one very recluse male died between 9 -10 months - the female disappeared just after a post hatch second mating).